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DESCRIPTION:Join us for the inaugural Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewi
sh Material Culture. Andrea M. Berlin will deliver a series of three lectu
res entitled “Beyond the Temple: Jewish Households from the Maccabees to t
he Great Revolt against Rome.” Alex P. Jassen\, Karen B. Stern\, and Azzan
Yadin-Israel will each respond to one lecture and also offer a correspond
ing lunchtime talk the following day. Additional support provided by The D
avid Berg Foundation.\n\nOn Tuesday\, October 24\, at 6pm Andrea M. Berlin
will deliver the third lecture entitled “The Great Revolt\, and Its Jewis
h Afterlife.” Azzan Yadin-Israel will offer a response.Beyond the Temple:
Jewish Households from the Maccabees to the Great Revolt against Rome. Whe
n did Jews first begin using material goods to communicate a religious ide
ntity? Why did such a practice arise\, and what were its social and politi
cal consequences? In these three lectures\, Berlin will couple archaeologi
cal remains with historical testimony to address these questions. The stor
y begins in the second century BCE\, with the rise of the Hasmoneans\, a l
anded family from rural Judea who leveraged military success and political
connections to establish themselves as both religious and civic leaders.
The Jewish-Mediterranean state they created lasted just two generations\,
but by the time of its demise in the mid-first century BCE it had provided
the context and impetus for the full integration of Judea into Mediterran
ean political culture. This gave rise to an elite class beholden more to p
olitical than priestly interests and set up a clash between two modes of J
ewish self-understanding: one who took its cues from that extreme philo-ro
maios Herod\; and a second who saw themselves as fulfilling a heroic Macca
bean vision of a re-conquered Promised Land. In the nexus between these mo
des\, archaeological remains reveal that there developed in Judea and Gali
lee a new materially-inflected lifestyle in which people adopted specific
goods and behaviors to reflect a connection to Jerusalem. This was a commo
ner’s lifestyle\; it allowed non-elites to infuse their homes and day-to-d
ay lives with a Jewish sensibility. Over the course of the early to mid-fi
rst century CE\, we can see how this lifestyle became implicated in the de
velopment of hardened social identities\, which in turn contributed to zea
lotry and\, ultimately\, the Great Revolt against Rome.The Great Revolt\,
and its Jewish Afterlife. Galilee\nin the first century CE was a region tr
ansformed. For several hundred years\, it\nhad been a place of scattered s
ettlements occupied by different ethnic groups\,\nall sharing similar life
styles and buying the same range of goods from local\nmarkets. There exist
ed a few small open-air sanctuaries of varying orientation\nbut no evidenc
e for organized religious activity. A visitor here in 100 BCE\nwould not o
bserve separate cultural spheres. But a century later\, things had\nchange
d dramatically. A sharp line now separates the two local cultural groups\n
of Phoenicians and Jews\, a division reflected in a host of material remai
ns. Jews\nlive surrounded by\nspecific markers: Judean-style household pot
tery\, lamps\, stone vessels\, and mikva’ot. They build synagogues\, which
\, in\naddition to their practical functions\, also are a structural adver
tisement of\ncommunal identity and solidarity. By the middle of the first
century CE no Jew\nliving in this region would remember when daily life di
d not materially reify a\ndistinctive ethnic and religious identity. Such
a lifestyle would have\ncontributed to a sharply delineated world view\, a
sense of separation from\nothers. This view\, sense\, and lifestyle contr
ibuted in part to the decision in\n66 CE to revolt against Rome. Neither t
he view nor the lifestyle survived\nbeyond the Roman victory in the year 7
0 CE. It could be argued\, however\, that\nthe sense of separation has liv
ed on.Professor Andrea M. Berlin is the James R. Wiseman\nChair in Classic
al Archaeology at Boston University. She has been excavating in\nthe easte
rn Mediterranean for over thirty years\, working on projects from Troy\nin
Turkey to Coptos in southern Egypt to Paestum\, in Italy. Her specialty i
s\nthe Near East from the time of Alexander the Great through the Roman er
a\, about\nwhich she has written four books and over fifty articles. She i
s especially\ninterested in studying the realities of daily life\, and in
exploring the\nintersection of politics and cultural change in antiquity.
She has been\nappointed as Leon Levy Foundation Professor of Jewish Materi
al Culture at Bard\nGraduate Center for the fall 2017 semester.Azzan Yadin
-Israel earned his BA from the Hebrew University and his PhD from the Univ
ersity of California\, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. He has
published widely on rabbinic literature\, Hebrew Bible\, and early Christ
ianity\, including two books on early rabbinic midrash: Scripture as Logos
: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (2004) and Scripture and Tradit
ion: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash (2014)\, both with the Univers
ity of Pennsylvania Press. A Professor of Jewish Studies and Classics at R
utgers University\, his latest book is The Grace of God and the Grace of M
an: The Theologies of Bruce Springsteen (Lingua Press\, 2016).This event w
ill be livestreamed. Please check back the day of the event for a link to
the video. To watch videos of past events please visit our YouTube page.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20171024T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20171024T193000
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Beyond the Temple: Jewish Households from the
Maccabees to the Great Revolt against Rome
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